


An Urgent Summons

by APgeeksout



Category: Banshee (TV), Fallen London | Echo Bazaar
Genre: Community: hc_bingo, Gen, drugged
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-01
Updated: 2014-12-01
Packaged: 2018-02-27 16:22:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2699474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/APgeeksout/pseuds/APgeeksout
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're not big on names down here.  It's another thing he likes about the place.  The locals have taken to referring to him as the Brooding Rogue; he's been called worse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Urgent Summons

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt "drugged" in round 5 of hurt/comfort bingo. 
> 
> Spoiler-y for the "Family and Law" story branch in Fallen London; no significant spoilers for _Banshee_.

The rooftop shack is drafty and unstable - there's a good chance that the artist's model or the jewel thief or the heiress will bring the whole place down on their heads one night - but it's easy to breathe up here. Easy to remind himself each morning (or what passes for morning in this place) that he's free of bars and dripstone walls and the shadow of The Snuffer.

On the rooftop outside the shack, with the softly twinkling candles of the city below and the hush of bats' wings in the darkness above, it's possible to feel like a person, most of the time. A wily, formidable gentleman (for some value of “gentleman” that takes into account his dealings with devils and clergymen, anyway) with choices to make. 

It's also hard for anyone to get the drop on him. The climb is treacherous and, so, usually noisy. 

He hears the dancing slippers on the slates before his visitor announces himself with all his usual reserve. 

"You better be home, Baby. One of your lost lambs has a big fucking mess to clean up, and I am _not_ dressed to be traipsing over the Neath's half-acre looking for your narrow ass."

Job clears the ridgeline of the roof, bedecked in off-white silk and a tiara set with faintly luminescent chips of fecund amber. Stones they both know he'll fence in a heartbeat once he finds someone to introduce him to this Nadir everyone whispers about. 

"Who is it?" he takes a pull from the bottle of gin he's been working on. If Job's come for him in person instead of bribing an urchin to carry a singsong message, then he's probably going to need the drink. 

"The Last Constable." 

They're not big on names down here. It's another thing he likes about the place. The locals have taken to referring to him as the Brooding Rogue; he's been called worse. 

Job - the Unrepentant Forger, they call him on the streets, with wry smiles and a stress on the first syllable - reaches out a hand and snakes the gin bottle. "She's at that pub in Veilgarden, the divey one you like so much. She's out of her skull - honey-mazed, laudanum, the mushroom vinegar they call wine here, something. Says she was dosed."

"The Cheery Man." His hands curl into involuntary fists at his sides. He shakes them out, ignoring the look Job levels at him. Knowing, pitying, whatever; he doesn't need to see it. "She's been getting too close, leaning on his lieutenants."

"Well, whoever she pissed off on the way there, she's in a corner booth with that loud girl who hawks those mushroom tarts pouring Darkdrop coffee down her throat. Against my better judgment, I told them I'd come for you."

"No, it's good you did." He reaches inside the shack, takes his anarchist's sable from the hook by the door, and shrugs it on. He's always gotten away with more when he dresses the part, and this coat makes it just a little easier to slip through the alleys unremarked. Makes the locals who do take notice just a touch likelier to shrink back in dread.

It usually just makes Job sigh and mutter about lines and fabrics, but he limits it to a raised eyebrow tonight, theatrically unimpressed, as he watches him pin the antique constable's badge over his heart. 

"You ever think you might have less trouble keeping out of jail if you didn't spend so much time in the company of law enforcement?"

"Think I'd have the best luck staying out of the shit if I didn't spend so much time with you."

"Please, motherfucker," Job scoffs. "You'd be lost without me."

It's close enough to true that the only possible response is a heartfelt, "Fuck you." 

 

The Grubby Kitten is tucked between two honey-dens a couple blocks off Hollow Street, where Veilgarden and Spite bleed together. Everything in the place is worn with age, seedy and smoky, but the Sober Publican keeps the bartop and the glassware clean. Plus, he's developed a taste for the Murgatroyd's pale ale on tap. 

It's also one of the few businesses in the neighborhood that the Cheery Man hasn't sunk his hooks into. One of the few places in this fallen city that she could have staggered into tonight with any hope of walking back out. 

He passes through the usual assortment of neddy men, rakes, and other assorted toughs loitering in the gutters and grimy alleys surrounding. He keeps a watchful eye, sure that at least some of them are lurking about to take advantage of her condition, drag her before the Cheery Man or worse. 

Inside, the crowd is sparse, and mostly made up of regulars. They all know how risky it can be to eavesdrop in this city, but whispered secrets can fill a larder, so they're all focused - subtly or brazenly or somewhere in between - on the booth in the darkened corner at the far end of the long barroom. 

The Sober Publican pulls him a pint without being asked. He takes it and crosses the room and slides into the empty side of the booth as casually as possible. 

"You came," the Last Constable says softly, reaching across the table to seize his arm. Her hands are small and delicate, but her grip is firm. "Look, it's the Rogue," she says, turning to the Canny Costermonger at her side. "I knew he was dependable," she adds earnestly. 

"So 'e is," the Costermonger agrees, smiling indulgently. "Maybe take another swig?" She tips a carafe into the earthenware mug in front of the Constable, and the smell of the strong brew fills the close air of the pub.

The Last Constable's eyes, though tired as always, are bright and dark, only a fine ring of warm brown visible around the edge of dilated pupils. She's flushed, high color warming the skin of her cheeks and the graceful curve of her neck, exposed by the open collar of her off-duty clothes. Her hair is beginning to fall loose from its practical knot, and a fragile smile flickers across her features before fading back to her customary wary expression. 

Whatever she's been fed has made her looser and taken the edges off of her watchfulness, but it hasn't subdued her completely. She still edgily scans the room's perimeter between momentary bursts of contentment. 

She withdraws her hand from his arm and wraps it around the mug instead. "Yes, thank you," she says, a little more evenly. "Thank you both. Without your help, I don't know what should have become of me." 

"Or what still might," he says. "Do you know how this happened? Who it could be?"

She shakes her head, takes another fortifying sip. "I ate supper at the canteen near my lodgings. It must have been in the food or the wine. I can't imagine who could have -- I - I know them all. Everyone who works there." 

The Costermonger gives her shoulder a consoling pat. 

"I left early to meet a contact in Doubt Street. If I'd finished..."

"This was a close call. Too close. You see that. Right?" 

She casts her eyes down to the tabletop, forehead creased, lower lip trembling until she pulls it between her teeth. After a long moment, she looks up, resolute and solemn. “I know what you're going to suggest, but even the Masters couldn't protect me. My father's had enough of me. Half the villains of London are coming for my head.”

He takes a pull from him his pint, mostly to have something to do with his hands; trying to put a fist through the fucking table won't do anything but draw scandal. 

The Costermonger reaches into the depths of her market basket and pulls out a mushroom pastie. She unwraps the waxed paper folded around it and pushes the whole bundle across the table to rest before the Constable. “Try a bit of this'n, luv.” 

The Constable smiles her thanks, and begins to dissect the flaky crust in the silence that falls on them.

When the thought dawns on him, half-way through his pint, their entire booth half-way sunk into despondency, he feels like the biggest damn fool in the Neath. If she were less unsteady, he'd be laughing at himself. “Does it have to be London?” he asks. “Could you go somewhere else – be someone else – until this blows over?”

Her brows knit together in thought and, probably, pain; she's been something like lucky tonight, but whatever she's been dosed with is probably going to leave her with a hangover that feels worse than death. Or the kind of dying they do here, anyway. 

“But, where?” 

He feels the first genuinely glad smile of the night spread across his face, the parts of a plan all locking together inside his head. “What do you know about the Elder Continent?”

 

It's the work of twenty minutes to pack her belongings into a pair of carpetbags. The Last Constable doesn't have much in the way of possessions, her rented rooms warm, comfortable, but utilitarian. It might almost be any of the places he's lived. That surprises him. He'd have guessed that someone with such deep roots – deep as anyone's in this town – would have more tying her down. 

Still, little as there is, she can't take it all with her. He finds himself charged with a goldfish, bright and swimming languid figures inside its crystal bowl, wrapped in a bundle of silk scarves to protect it from the night air and the jostling of the hansom that takes them toward Wolfstack Docks. 

She peers fondly down into the bowl, leaning into him in a way that might equally be about the after-effects of her dosing, or the chill of the wind whipping in off the zee, or the company. “I call him 'Rodrigo',” she says, her tone confessional. “You wouldn't think it, but he's a very cheerful fellow. Kept me company on any number of long nights.” 

She also presses a bottle of wine into his hands, the label brown with age, the glass dusty except for where their fingers have brushed. “Keep hold of this. We'll drink it when we've bested my father. And your demons.” 

Her gloved fingers brush his cheek, and then she's stepped down to the flags of the street, Job's Clay Man contact bowing deeply and relieving her of her bags. 

“Until we meet again, Rogue.”

 

Rodrigo does turn out to be good company. A point of brightness in the gloom of the rooftop shack on nights he wakes, sudden and breathless. Talks back less than Job or the urchins or the rats, too.


End file.
